How to safely copy home folder from a 10.04 desktop to a new ubuntu 12.04 installation on a notebook?

Question

Recently I've bought a new notebook. I'm going to install ubuntu 12.04 next to win8 with dual boot config. Is it that simple and safe to just copy my home folder from an old desktop with Ubuntu 10.04 to a new 12.04 installed system? Or should I do that other way?

Solution

Yes, just copy over your home directory. These are the steps I would follow:

1. Make a proper archive on the old system.

   cd /home
   sudo tar -zcf username-archive.tar.gz username
   

2. Make sure that you use the same username on the new system.

3. Copy over the archive to the new system outside the home directory where we will unpack it to of course.

4. (Re)boot up the new system, but don't log in yet. This will make sure nothing will be running under your user account, depending on the contents of your homedir.

5. Press Ctrl+Alt+F1 to go to a virtual terminal.

6. Log in, then become root fully, e.g.

   sudo su -
   

7. Backup the almost empty homedir, e.g.

   mv /home/username /home/username-old
   

8. Unpack it, e.g.

   cd /home
   tar -zxf username-archive.tar.gz
   

Comments

[gertvdijk]

Why would the system crash because of the older configuration files in the /home dot-directories are still present? That would mean that all Ubuntu upgrades would result in crashes as they upgrade full Ubuntu versions without touching the homedir contents. This answer is simply untrue.

[Mohamad Khani]

I have kubuntu 13.10 . when i update to 13.10 by keep home folder my kubunt crashed. And then I had to remove all configuration files in live cd to solve that.

[chesedo]

@gertvdijk, made some improvements. I can remember that I had some problems with compiz and unity (or something related to them) settings merging in the past which might happen here.